


Agents of S.P.D.

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Columba livia domestica, Gen, gam gam's gonna love it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-06 13:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11037000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: Jack's first month as chief had been going swell, really—he’d completed repairs to the office, schmoozed with some senators and their daughters, nabbed the leader of a drug ring, etc.—but then a real problem had come up and put the kibosh on the honeymoon period. So Carter had marched into his office and explained her plan, and he said forget it, Marge, no way; and she put her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow and asked if he had any better ideas, and, well…





	Agents of S.P.D.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



“This is crazy,” Sousa grumbled to Jack as he slid into the passenger seat and set aside his crutch.

“This is your girlfriend’s idea,” Jack reminded him. He leaned back in the seat and sighed, wondering why he had agreed to this. His first month as chief had been going swell, really—he’d completed repairs to the office, schmoozed with some senators and their daughters, nabbed the leader of a drug ring, etc.—but then word had come that their old friend Dr. Fennhoff had somehow been receiving coded messages while in prison, and it didn’t seem to be an inside job. And Fennhoff certainly wasn’t about to tell them who the sender was or how the messages were coming in. So Carter had marched into Jack’s office and explained her plan, and he said forget it, Marge, no way; and she put her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow and asked if he had any better ideas, and, well…

…and there he was with Sousa, pulling out of the driveway of the prison onto the main road. Jack spared a glance for their shackled passenger in the backseat, who glared back mutely. _We do have the perfect bait_ , Carter had said. She wasn’t wrong.

“My—wait, what?” Sousa sputtered, turning pink.

“Oh, come on. You’ve been swooning over Carter since day one. She’s single, right? I don’t see what the problem is.”

Sousa rolled his eyes but didn’t deny the swooning part. “Yeah, and you’re single too, but I’m not asking you on any dates. Sorry to disappoint. Besides, I’m not gonna bother her by asking again—” He abruptly broke off mid-sentence.

“Oh,” Jack said gleefully as they pulled up to a stoplight. “So you _did_ ask Carter out. I knew it!”

“Christ. Keep it to yourself, okay?” He looked over his shoulder at their silent passenger. “You too, Doc.”

“She said no?” Jack rolled down the window and honked the horn at the car in front of them, which had slowed almost to a stop in the middle of the road. “You want me to put in a good word for you or—”

The car ahead of them suddenly reversed and rammed into their bumper, jolting both of them forward in their seats. Jack’s forehead hit the steering wheel at a glancing angle and bounced off, and he was still slightly dazed and fumbling for his gun when he heard a familiar click close to his head. He froze.

“Put your gun away,” he heard the man instruct Sousa, who had recovered faster than Jack. He had the faintest trace of a Russian accent. “Nobody has to get hurt. I just want the doctor.”

“You don’t wanna do this,” Jack said.

The man shook his head. “No, I really do. Now put your gun away, Agent, and keep your hands where I can see him.”

Jack gave Sousa a nod, and the other agent lowered his gun. Jack turned his head slightly to get a glimpse of the man as he took a few steps and yanked open the back door, still keeping his gun trained on them. “Wait,” the man said with a frown. “You’re not—”

Jack heard the screeching of tires and jolted forward at the second impact as another car sideswiped them, taking out both the man and the car door. The third car braked hard a few yards away, and Carter jumped out of the driver’s seat and marched over to them. She pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her purse and swiftly flipped the man over and cuffed him. He groaned.

“Oh, hush. You’re fine,” she snapped.

Still slightly shaken up, Jack climbed out of the driver’s seat and joined her. “Jesus, Carter, this is SSR property.” He used his foot to nudge the crumpled car door lying on the ground while Carter and Sousa dragged the man to his feet. “All right, Daniel?” he heard her ask Sousa quietly. Jack didn’t pick up his response.

Meanwhile in the back seat, Dr. Davidson shed his own handcuffs, pulled the metal mask off his face, and joined them. The bald scientist looked down at their captive and shook his head. “I don’t know if this was worth an extra vacation day,” Jack heard him mutter as he rubbed at the marks around his jaw where the mask had rubbed into his skin.

Jack walked over to their assailant’s car and opened the door on the passenger side. Two caged pigeons stared back at him, making somewhat distressed cooing noises. An empty third cage occupied the back seat. “What the…” he muttered to himself as pulled out one of the cages.

The third SSR car came screeching to a halt beside him, and Ramirez and Donahue ran over. “Sorry, boss,” Donahue apologized. “We hit traffic. Uh, what’s with the birds?”

Jack had no idea. He stared at the pigeon and the pigeon stared back and bobbed its head—almost like it was saying, _beats me too, pal_.

* * *

Their new acquaintance, Victor Stepanov, turned out to have been Dr. Fennhoff’s assistant during the war. Apart from that piece of information, he was not in a particularly chatty mood—not with Sousa, whose promises of a deal were met with one-word answers; nor was he responsive to Jack’s fist. So Jack sent Sousa out and brought Carter in. He leaned up against the wall and waited, hands in his pockets.

“Mr. Stepanov,” Carter began, “I’d like you to tell me about your birds. They’re homing pigeons, correct? We utilized them during the war; I imagine you did the same.”

Stepanov looked her up and down. “I don’t have anything to say to a broad,” he said with a leer. Then he licked his lips and added a few more choice remarks.

Carter gave Stepanov a sweet little smile that made Jack’s blood run cold. He said nothing as she took a seat on the table and swung her legs around so she was directly facing the suspect. She delicately placed the heel of her shoe just above a sensitive area. Stepanov started to sweat, but he stayed silent.

“How unfortunate. If there is nothing for us to talk about, then…” Carter started to grind her heel in. Jack couldn’t help but wince sympathetically.

“Stop, stop!” Stepanov gasped. “I’ll talk!”

Carter relaxed the pressure just slightly. “Well, get on with it.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. I used the birds to deliver messages to the window of Dr. Fennhoff’s cell.”

Carter raised an eyebrow and glanced at Jack. “This is about more than passing messages to Fennhoff,” she noted. “You wanted to break him out, didn’t you? The last message we intercepted had today’s date and a time on it. What is supposed to happen at that time?” To make her point, she starting digging her heel in again.

“Ah! I’m talking, I’m talking, okay? You are familiar with molecular nitramene, yes? I was able to obtain an early prototype, taken during the theft of Howard Stark’s lab. I put it on the pigeon and released it. Once the device was inside, the doctor was supposed to feign illness; breathing problems. After the guards removed the mask, Dr. Fennhoff was to use the bomb as leverage and lead a prison breakout. My role was to wait and pick him up...until I saw your car leave the prison,” he said with a frown. Then he smiled. “Still, you may already be too late, if the bomb has been successfully delivered.”

If Jack hadn’t seen the crumpled remains of the Roxxon facility and witnessed just how close Fennhoff’s revenge plot had come to succeeding, it would’ve been the dumbest plan he had ever heard. “Damn it.” He left the room and went around to the other side of the mirror where Sousa was already picking up the phone. “Call O’Sullivan at the prison and tell them to go on lockdown until further notice. And put Fennhoff in solitary—no windows, no funny business—tell ‘em to wear earplugs, just in case. Got it?”

He didn’t even wait for Sousa to answer before ducking back into the interrogation room. “So let’s get this straight,” he said. “You put a bomb on a pigeon.”

Stepanov looked offended. “Not just any pigeon. Svetlana. She’s my best one.”

“A _pigeon_.” Jack repeated incredulously. “Oh my god.”

Stepanov had the actual nerve to snicker. Carter resumed the pressure until he whimpered. “I think we’re finished here,” she said, swinging her legs around and jumping down from the table. “Mr. Stepanov, our agents will escort you to your cell. I suggest you make yourself comfortable, as you’ll be with us for a while.”

Stepanov started to laugh. “Do what you will with me. The doctor will have his revenge one way or another. You’ll be too late to stop him. But do not be afraid.” He fixed Jack with an intense, slightly cross-eyed stare. “All you have to do is…focus.”

Jack focused on punching him in the jaw.

* * *

“Jesus, Marge,” Jack said, shaking his head as they left the interrogation room. “You can’t _do_ that to a man.”

“Do what to a man?” she asked innocently.

Behind him, Jack heard Sousa choke back a laugh, lunatic that he was. “Forget it.”

* * *

Though Howard Stark was out of town, his butler was available—albeit none too pleased to be back at the SSR. As they escorted Stark’s butler to the lab, Jack had overheard him mutter something to Carter about the quiche he had been just about to put in the oven. But he couldn’t feel overly sorry for the man, since after all, he only had his own boss to blame for this mess.

Now Jarvis was busy sketching out a complicated molecular diagram on the blackboard, with all the scientists clamoring around to take notes. “The substance in question is a precursor of sorts to molecular nitramene,” he explained. “Unfortunately, it was rather more volatile than the final product, and after a few close calls in the laboratory, Mr. Stark opted to change the formula to make it more stable. Almost all of the prototypes were neutralized, save for this one.”

“If it’s similar to nitramene, then it should have a vita radiation signature, correct?” Carter mused.

“Indeed, Miss Carter; in fact, the signature is considerably stronger. I expect the detector will respond within…oh, about a quarter mile away from the source. The containment device itself is quite small; about half the size of the final version you encountered before.” He hesitated. “I cannot emphasize enough that this substance is extremely volatile and should be treated with the utmost caution. The longer it takes to retrieve the device, the riskier the situation becomes.”

“Great,” Jack sighed. “Please tell me you know how to neutralize this thing. Where’s Stark, anyway?”

“In Belize with Joan Crawford for the foreseeable future. Evidently they’ve reconciled. Mr. Stark did detail the neutralization process, though I admit I haven’t personally attempted it.” Jarvis pulled a paper out of his pocket and showed them. Stark had written down a lengthy list of supplies and numbered instructions in messy handwriting, with certain words heavily underlined and capitalized. In one corner he had drawn a crude rendition of a mushroom cloud. It was not terribly reassuring.

“Well, get ready to personally attempt it. You stay here and work with the lab rats and figure out whatever equipment you need. Sousa, I want that vita ray detector out of the file room. Carter, get the car. We’re finding this pigeon.”

* * *

Jack had spent most of his life in New York, and somehow he had never truly reckoned with the sheer number of flying rats in the city: as the car slowed to a stop on Fifth Avenue, he watched a massive flock descend around a dropped sandwich and peck away madly at the sidewalk, not in the least bit intimidated by the humans passing around them. None of the birds appeared to be carrying bombs. The vita ray detector sat silently in Carter’s lap.

“How the hell is there traffic at this hour?” Jack complained, beeping the horn uselessly at the car ahead of them. They hadn’t moved more than ten feet in five minutes.

“I bet they’ll move if you honk the horn again,” Sousa piped up from the back seat.

“Jesus. We’d make better time if we walked.” Jack pulled over to the curb and got out, snatching the net and empty cage out of the trunk. “Marge, what makes you so sure we’ll find the bird at Stepanov’s place, anyway? It’s a pigeon; it could be anywhere in this city.”

“I worked with homing pigeons on occasion during the war,” Carter began, and Jack couldn’t resist cutting in. “’Course you did,” he muttered.

She ignored him. “They’re trained to return to a specific location. Since no prison riot or massive explosion has been reported—yet—we can presume that Daniel called in time to warn them, the bird was unable to deliver, and therefore it would fly home.”

“Fine. What unit were you in anyway? Agent Carter, Special Pigeon Division?”

“It’s not that complicated,” Sousa added as he hurried along behind them. “Usually they can only return home, but it’s possible to train them to go back and forth between two locations. Researchers think that they use the earth’s magnetic fields to orient themselves.”

“Don’t tell me you were with the pigeon unit too.”

Sousa said something under his breath, but Jack was distracted by the sudden whirring of the vita ray detector in Carter’s hand. “Let’s move,” he barked at his agents, and they hurried south along Fifth Avenue. The detector’s whirring sound grew louder and more high-pitched as they approached an old apartment building on the corner of Central Park.

“This is Stepanov’s address,” Carter pointed out to Jack. She at least had the tact to leave out the obvious _I-told-you-so_.

He stared up at the building. “Top floor?”

“Top floor,” Sousa confirmed. There was no elevator, and given the relative urgency of the situation Jack and Carter ended up quickly leaving him behind on the stairs, but Sousa didn’t complain—just focused doggedly on hauling himself up the steps at his own pace.  

Jack was panting a little as he made it to the door of Stepanov’s apartment, with Carter hot on his heels. (How did she run up ten stories in those shoes, anyway?) He set down the net and cage and drew his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carter draw hers as well. “This is the SSR; open up!” he announced loudly, and when nobody answered, he kicked in the door.

The apartment was small and nearly devoid of furniture, save for a mattress on the floor, and there was certainly no sign of Svetlana or any other pigeon. “You do realize the door was unlocked?” Carter asked as she tested the knob.

Kicking it had been more gratifying. He ignored her and leaned out the window, squinting into the sunlight while the vita ray detector continued to whine. “You sure that detector thing works?”

“Absolutely,” she answered as she circled around the room. She spoke into the radio: “Daniel, we’re in the apartment. There’s nothing in here, but we must be close.”

“Tell your boyfriend to hurry up,” Jack added.

“My—I beg your pardon?” She turned very, very red, but she was spared any further response when Daniel’s voice came over the radio.

“The roof,” he said. “Try the roof.”    

Jack stared at Carter. He hadn’t even considered that possibility. “Let’s go.”

He snatched the cage and they ran up the final flight of stairs to the roof. He pushed open the door and immediately saw the coop—and the pigeon perched on top, wearing a tiny leather harness with a glowing yellow ball attached to the front. Svetlana fluffed her feathers and turned around but didn’t try to fly away as they approached. Jack set the cage down on the ledge and pulled a piece of stale bread out of his pocket. She fixed him with an unflinching gaze.

“You think it knows its name?” he asked Carter, who had set aside the vita ray detector, taken up the net, and was slowly coming up from behind. Jack tore the corner off the piece of bread and held out his hand. “Here, bird. C’mon, Svetlana.”

For a second, he actually thought it might work, but then Carter brought down the net several seconds too late and the bird took off in a panic. Jack backed up and tried to snatch the pigeon out the air with his hands and missed. Instead, he knocked over the cage and sent it crashing down into the pavement, and for a moment he wobbled at the edge of the roof and would have lost his balance if Carter hadn’t grabbed him by the arm and yanked him forward. He looked over his shoulder and realized that ten stories up was actually pretty far from the ground. The cage looked to be in at least a dozen pieces, though fortunately, it hadn’t damaged anything or anyone when it fell.

Carter was already on the radio with Sousa. “Daniel, I’ve got eyes on the bird—it’s headed towards Central Park. We lost the cage. Jack’s coming back down.”

He wasn’t entirely sure when she had taken over command, but then again, she had also just saved his life and there wasn’t time to argue. Jack snatched up the vita ray detector and the net and barreled back down the stairs, nearly knocking down Sousa somewhere around the third floor. “…headed northeast into the park, by the pond,” he heard Carter say over the radio. “Are you down there yet? It’s about to go out of sight.”

“Working on it,” Sousa huffed into the radio as he hurried after Jack.

Down on the sidewalk, the vita ray detector started squealing more insistently. “I see the two of you,” Carter said. “Head across the street into the park. It’s about…fifty feet away from you. Close to a statue. Oh, it just took off again…bloody hell, I can’t see it anymore.”

Jack scanned the area carefully as he and Sousa entered the park. He could see the statue Carter had mentioned, which certainly was surrounded by pigeons, but _their_ pigeon was nowhere to be seen. He suddenly realized that even if they somehow caught it, they had nothing to put it in. And he sure as hell wasn’t carrying the damn thing all the way back to the SSR in his hands. “Marge, we’re gonna need a new cage,” he said into the radio.

“Over there,” Sousa said, tilting his head to the right. About thirty feet away, surrounded by dozens of her peers, Svetlana was busy pecking away and entirely oblivious to the trouble she was causing them. The device containing the nitramene almost brushed the ground.

Jack felt around his pockets for the last of the stale bread as they approached. He tore off a few pieces, tossed them on the ground, and handed the rest to Sousa. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Jack.”

As if on cue, dozens of tiny pigeon heads suddenly swiveled to attention. Then, all at once, they descended in a giant gray cloud around Sousa, who attempted to shield himself with his arm. Svetlana flew away in the other direction and landed in a tree. Jack swore and ran after the bird, certain that they were about to lose it for good if it took off again.

But then, through the leaves, he spotted movement and realized that the harness was somehow snagged on the branches. The pigeon flapped its wings wildly, struggling to break free. Jack held his breath and braced himself for the explosion. Nothing happened. “Where’s that cage, Carter?” he asked into the radio.

Sousa, having abandoned the rest of the bread and broken away from the flock, limped over to him. He gazed up at the tree, took in the situation, and brushed the feathers off his jacket. “I’ll clear the perimeter. Up you go, Thompson,” he said cheerfully before shuffling away.

 _That’s Chief Thompson to you_ , Jack wanted to say, but he settled for glaring at his back instead as he gripped one of the lower branches and hauled himself up. He balanced carefully and reached towards the pigeon, which responded by fluffing out its feathers and jabbing at his hand. He briefly wondered about what kinds of diseases pigeons carried and if they could be transmitted to humans before figuring that the nitramene bomb was probably his bigger concern.

“C’mere, c’mere, good pigeon, nice pigeon—ow! Goddamn it!” It bit down and didn’t let go, and he resisted the urge to jerk away. Instead, he concentrated on not slipping while he released his grip on the tree trunk and used his other hand to untangle the bird. To his surprise, it abruptly let go of his hand and stopped flapping around. It made cooing noises as he tucked it under his elbow and climbed down from the tree, and for a brief moment he contemplated the possibility that maybe flying rats weren’t as bad as he thought. Then the pigeon shit on his sleeve and he decided he had been right the first time around, and also none of this was going in the report.

Fortunately, at that moment Carter came to the rescue, bearing an ornate birdcage with an impressive display of roses and baby’s breath tied to the top by a giant pink ribbon. “Borrowed from the florist’s shop,” she noted as Jack took it from her, unceremoniously shoved the pigeon inside, and shut the door.

Sousa had circled back around to them by that point. He didn’t even bother to hide a grin at the sight of Jack holding the birdcage. “Gam Gam’s gonna love it, Jack.”

“You—” Jack began, searching in vain for some witty response before realizing that it actually _was_ his grandmother’s style, and if there was time later perhaps he could go back to the florist and find out how much it cost,“—are right.”

On the drive back to the SSR, he thought about Chief Dooley and how he would have handled the situation. Jack just couldn’t picture the man climbing trees and chasing after pigeons. But maybe...maybe that was okay. Maybe he could be his own kind of chief.

* * *

After wiping the bird shit off his sleeve, Jack went to the lab to join the crowd of agents and scientists hovering around Jarvis as he set to work weighing and mixing a rather bewildering array of substances. He stood in the back and watched Jarvis carefully measure out a few milliliters of a clear liquid and pour it into the nitramene. The yellow glow flickered and went out, and everyone in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief. Then it reignited and they all groaned.

“Perhaps one more try?” Carter suggested, aiming for an optimistic note.

Jarvis dabbed the sweat off his forehead with his handkerchief and mumbled, “I feel sick.”

“All right, that’s enough, everybody but the scientists out,” Carter announced as she shooed Jack and the other agents out of the lab and shut the door behind them. They dispersed somewhat sheepishly back to their desks—except for Sousa, who followed Jack into his office.

“So what do you want to do with them?” Sousa asked, gesturing at the three pigeons in their cages. Jack had put them in the corner and given them a little food and water, and they seemed content. “Let them go?”

Agent Svetlana of the S.P.D. fixed Jack with a beady-eyed stare and started to coo again. “They’re _evidence_ , Sousa,” Jack objected.

Sousa rolled his eyes. “I meant after the case is closed. You gonna move the coop into your office permanently?”

“Or I could get rid of your desk and put the coop there,” Jack shot back. “Maybe I can get Stark to take the birds,” he speculated. “He has the space for it. And technically, this is kind of his fault.”

“Good luck with that, Chief,” Sousa snorted. He turned to leave.

“Sousa.”

“Yeah?”

“Good work today.”

He gave Jack a measured look. “Thanks. You should tell Carter, too.”

Jack did tell her, later, after the nitramene bomb had been successfully neutralized and Jarvis had been sent home with a reluctant promise to talk to Stark about finding a new home for the birds. Then the three of them went out for drinks and he bought the first round. It seemed only fair.

**Author's Note:**

> Pigeons really were used in World War II (and other wars), and some even received medals for bravery! There's still ongoing debate over the homing mechanism: some popular theories include magnetic fields, using the sun as a compass, low frequency sound waves, and olfactory cues.


End file.
